


The Tragedy Begins (When Silence is Not Understood)

by relevant_elephant



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relevant_elephant/pseuds/relevant_elephant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dire punishment, a broken hearted brother, and a vow that could bring them together.</p><p>THIS STORY WILL NO LONGER BE UPDATED.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tragedy Begins (When Silence is Not Understood)

_“Silence is argument carried out by other means.”_

**Che Guevara**

 

Thor is brash. He is loud. He is a combustible element, permanently lit and prone to going off, be it in anger or in joy. It’s effusive and wanted – Thor in a sulk, in silence, is unnatural. It is unnerving and the whole of Glaðsheimr, of Asgard, has dimmed since the dawn of Thor’s vow.

It should not be borne, the courtiers would whisper amongst themselves. His loyalty is misplaced, whispered amongst even his closest of friends. Thor does not care. He was silent, he is silent, he will be silent, until the end of time if need be. His brother will not suffer alone.

“It has been two weeks, son. Your point has been made, considered and rejected. Loki will suffer his punishment as lain down by the Council and nothing you can do will reverse it. It is a lenient punishment, by all standards.”

Thor continues his stare into the distance, his eyes fastened to a nebula the color of Loki’s eyes, steel grey in places and yet lighter blue in others. Loki’s eyes, he fathoms, have not shown such liveliness as this nimbus in centuries. _Would that I had recognized such a loss when it could have mattered._

A deep sigh falls from Odin’s lips and a heavy hand settles onto Thor’s shoulder. Thor casts a quick glance to the side, eyes taking in the fingers gripping his skin through shirt and armor, before looking forward once more.

He has nothing left to say to his father. It had all been said to, then had all been shouted and finally had all been glared at Odin the first week of Loki’s enforced penance; if Thor had even been of a mind to re-open discussion, and therefore his mouth, in the first place.

One mighty squeeze of his shoulder and a murmured, “This silence is merely making Loki’s sentence harder on your mother,” later found Odin departing. He hates himself just a little, for causing his sweet and gentle dam such heartache.

Thor looks behind himself with a sigh, heart dwelling on the damage he is causing his good mother, and watches as his father - once a great and mighty king - ambles toward the palace, body hunched and form wizened. 

_“You would do this to your own son? You who have wronged him so from the time of his birth!_

_It is this such casual cruelty that has shattered his mind and mired his heart in darkness!”_

Thor knows his past allegations have played a part, near as large a part as Loki, in his father’s frailer figure and yet he cannot go back on his word, he cannot turn against his beloved brother. Not this time, conscious as he now is of what he has unknowingly done to the person he has loved always, above all others.

_“I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss.”_

Thor knows not if Loki accuses him of tossing Loki into the nothing, where even the Bifrost – had she still worked – could reach him; or whether the abyss Thor had so abandoned him to had started in their adolescence, but it matters not. As older brother, it had been he, Thor, who should have protected Loki from such a fate. He had failed. He will not do so now, whether Loki knows and accepts Thor’s own penance and solidarity or not.

Contemplation of the stars grows old for Thor soon enough and he turns back toward the palace, and crowds, and life; that very life his friends will try to persuade him to join once again. They do not understand, sometimes, even, Thor believes they do not _wish_ to understand.

He has been to the ones they call Psychometricia, those who see all in the past with the touch of a mere object. He was witness to the gathering of Sif and the Warriors Three, when they discussed Thor’s fall to Midgard. Their suspicions had thus proven true, but Thor could not but think that centuries upon centuries of such misgivings had helped shape the black truth of Loki’s betrayal, of the insidious darkness that had enshrouded his heart.

_“He may speak about the good of Asgard, but he's always been jealous of Thor.”_

_“True, but we should be grateful to him. He did save our lives.”_

_“Laufey said there were traitors in the House of Odin.”_

_“Loki's always been one for mischief, but you're talking about something else entirely.”_

 

Such hate, yet filled with truth, at the last. Sif with accusations that Thor cannot help but see as buffers between her and Loki. And when he looks back, he does not see the friendship between them he had always thought was there. He sees a distrust, now, in young Sif’s eyes, when he had proudly presented the jewel of his eye, his most beloved of beloveds – Loki, to a dear friend he had made.

In Hogun, he could never see such, not even upon reflection, for the man ever has held his thoughts close to his chest. Of them all, it is only Fandral and Volstagg Thor does not feel a rage over, does not hold wishes to hurt upon seeing. And this aches his heart, to wish such pain upon friends he had grown up with, cut his first battle teeth with, gained his first scars with – and sometimes from.

But he cannot but see that they are the only two who ever really even tried to accept Loki, if only for Thor’s sake - and he is not adept enough to fathom whether that was so or if there was once genuine like within their minds - without hidden words and dagger glances.

A gentle whisper of cloth upon golden marble floors alerts Thor to the presence of his mother beside him. He does not remember approaching, nor even entering, the palace but it matters not. His mind has been running from this place – often to his brother – too often lately for him to hold surprise at the goings on of feet that do not heed his mind. He’d meant for the grassy plains of Iðavöllr.

Tender hands settle around Thor’s arm, tiny in comparison to their son’s muscle. They walk in peace a while, the sound of Frigga’s gown heavy upon the floor and Thor’s boots ringing to the rafters. Then: “Sometimes, my love, a boy just needs his mother and his feet, whether he will it or no, will take him there. For everyone knows the truth about feet.”

Thor allowed a small twitch to his lips, but never will he allow a smile to cross the plains of his face until Loki can do so as well, without the stretch of pressure on his ravaged lips. He turns his head to his mother, seeing her for the first time that day, eyebrow crooked in question. Frigga’s own lips are tipped up, but it is a smile in name only; for Thor can see the desolation that this strife in her family has wrought. She continues onward anyway and as always.

“The feet, of course, always know the desires of a troubled heart.”

Thor snorts indelicately, amusement he cannot contain, and leans over his mother’s dwarfed frame, laying a reverent kiss upon her crown. She giggles herself, sound to balm his soul, for a moment, before she continues, “You hold to your vow, my little pearl,” and Thor feels a wash of serenity envelop him, at his mother’s use of an endearment he’d not heard these long centuries, “for your silence does not injure me as your father supposes. My heart grows glad, with every day you do not speak; for every day you do not speak is succor to your brother’s soul.”

Thor glances at his mother, eyes wide and hopeful at this unexpected news. She smiles.

“Yes. He hears of your unusual bearing and he knows it to be true. How can he not, when he cannot hear your robust voice carrying throughout the halls? You are loosing him from his tangled prison Thor, unfettering his heart and his mind. Spend time with him, feed that hunger that gnaws inside of him, add kindling to the fire of his hope that he has not been tossed aside.”

They have come to a stop now and stand blocking the entrance to the public hall, but Thor cares not at all; his mother’s eyes are more passionate than he’s seen since the battle between himself and Loki, since Loki’s fall. She is more animated, more alive and tears spring forth in Thor’s eyes at such glad tidings. He grips her hands in his own, his great dark paws engulfing Frigga’s paler, daintier ones like a greedy warg pup at its mother’s teat. He tries to gentle his touch, but he knows he holds strong by the tension that flows through his arms.

Frigga pulls loose of Thor’s grip, cradles his face instead. She lowers her voice, for this is not for the ears of the court. “He will spit at you, Thor, like a wounded cat, he will claw and strike. He will thrash at your heart, at first; his pride and anger and hatred for what he is and what he perceives his world to be combined into a battering ram designed to pummel your heart into the blackest of ash that his has become.

He will try to make you into another version of himself, but you will not let him. You have always loved Loki enough for the two of you and you will use that love to guide him back. I have faith in you, Thor. You will use your knowledge of battle, of strategy, to bring our Loki back to us. For the most perilous battles are the ones for the soul.”

Thor cannot see through the watery veil over his eyes, nor can he control the shaking of his limbs. It as an enormous task, he knows, and a path that is riddled with pain and woe. But he will weather it, as he has weathered every other sacred quest so ordered to him by the queen. And this journey is the most sacred, the most important of them all. His eyes clear with the help of his mother’s shawl, she lovingly dabbing at them even as her own eyes spill over.

He catches her butterfly-light hands and brings them to his lips, kisses her knuckles apiece and then the backs of her hands. She laughs through her tears and Thor knows it to be her loveliest moment, the moment when her beauty shines the brightest. He pulls back and notices the pale red upon her skin - beard burn.

Tsks fall from quirked lips that say, “Of course, you will properly shave beforehand, young man. A vow of silence does not give you leave to resemble the mining dwarves of Nidavellir, after months without a bath or a proper face-knife. Or Volstagg after falling asleep with his beard in reach of his youngest daughters.”

Thor allows one small smile to cross his face, for his mother and only her, before he steps back and bows. She glows at him, there is no other word for it, and nods regally before sweeping elegantly into the public hall. He watches until she fades into the crush of bodies awaiting judgment from the king before he turns toward the hall leading to the private chambers of the royal family, his mind properly abuzz.

He is in front of his bathing mirror, knife cleanly cutting his beard to within one-fourth of an inch from his face, when he admits to himself that he had not truly thought his silence would matter to Loki. He had not truly thought to visit him, that it would do any good, but if his mother says it will, then he must trust in that.

For Frigga has an undefined gift, the same gift that allowed her to know Thor’s mind without him speaking it, to know Odin’s thoughts about Thor’s vows; truly, she must know of Loki’s wish to be brought back to the person he once was – changed of course, as no one would not be after his time with the Chitauri, but himself once more.

Thor sets the clippers down on his massive counter, stares into eyes the color of water that gently laps in the Well of Urðarbrunnr,  and straps on his armor as he would do in all battle situations. He girds his heart with metal plates and his mind with shield, for Loki is ever a master of hurtful words - words turned spikes and maces and battle axes – even in a lack of ability to say them.

For the trick that lies beneath Loki’s breast, the trick no other has been able to decipher aside from Thor, is that his words are just words and remain just words; it is the eye that does the tricking or the hurting. Just as a sword remains a sword until it is in the hand that makes it a weapon.

Forewarned is forearmed et cetera ad nauseum and Thor knows there was never a set of idioms that was never more wrong. For how could anyone be truly armed against the vitriol of the one who holds captive their heart? He sighs once, checks his beard for any strays and then heads out to Loki’s room.

It is an anxious journey to his brother’s domain, fraught with mischievous, but on the whole, harmless little traps, as it is. Father could dispel them,  Thor knows, but he thinks the All-Father’s leeway to Loki is a truce of sorts, perhaps a way for father to let Loki know he loves him. Thor does not know; his foundations had been shaken with all he had borne witness to between Loki and their progenitor.

Perhaps he does not dispel them because there is no reason to – and that is a thought Thor refuses to dwell upon. He is angry at their father, but he cannot bring himself to believe the man truly does not hold Loki deep in his heart. Were he to, Thor’s world view and thus himself, would never be the same again – and for the worse.

He is relieved to have made it all the way to Loki’s room without a mishap that took his hair or put his eyeballs on the backside of his head. He is here, the door is there in front of him, waiting patiently for its use to be had and yet...

And yet. Thor, who has fought glorious battles, Thor who has bled rivers, who has faced down Fire Giants and dragons, Thor the Mighty, Thor the Thunderer, cannot help but to fear the face of the brother he once could not go without seeing.

Eyes heavy, Thor leans his forehead against the smoothest part of the door, between the depiction of his and Loki’s quest for the pelt of Fenrir and the tourney in which Loki had bested Freya and won her magical veil. He closes his eyes and breathes deep, body full upon the door. He is tired, the hate and bile and pain and loneliness he can feel beyond the entrance miring his body and exhausting his soul.

He just needs to rest, just a little, before he faces Loki. And gird himself against the tears that will come to his eyes upon glimpsing his brother’s ethereally gorgeous face, scarred with the foul dark slashes of stitch made of the hide of the Jörmungandr Odin had slain when they were but boys.

He does not get the time to brace himself, however, for the opposite door swings wide, revealing the form of his brother, eyes glaring and mouth set stern in the only position afforded it. Arms clenched tight around his waist, he arches a brow. But Thor cannot remove his eyes from Loki’s arms, for it is that , that truly reveals Loki’s mindset – and it is not anger. Not now and not at Thor. Loki has ever only cinched his arms about his waist when he is unsure of his welcome.

So Thor takes a risk, faster than he had promised to himself, but Loki is not in a combative mood and Thor would take advantage of that. He reaches out, slowly, as if to an injured and cornered dog, eyes gentle. His fingers graze the elbow material of Loki’s tunic, the rasping of the cloth filling the silence between them. Loki jerks back, only a little, before settling and allowing Thor’s hand to run up his bicep and then down, down, down to curl around Loki’s hand.

A slight twitch, infinitesimal, and then stillness. Thor waits Loki out. He is a skittish colt at the crossroads. If Thor pushes too hard, he will retreat and likely Thor won’t get another chance for a fortnight, if not more.

Another twitch and Thor can feel Loki’s long, elegant fingers caressing the inside of his own, slowly, seeking. They continue down to the tips and then part, slotting in between Thor’s and tightening until brother and brother are clasping hands. Thor is tugged inside, but he knows this is not the end.

Loki’s eyes are still hard. Comfort for comfort, they have given to each other, but Loki will spew his wrath, Thor knows not when. Perhaps Loki will allow Thor a few more minutes of clinging to him before the fighting begins. Perhaps, but unlikely.

The door closes on its own, an enchantment long since cast upon it and, like the previous traps, unaffected by the suppression of Loki’s innate powers. Thor casts about the chamber, eyes alighting here and there. The room has little changed, save for a few small evidences of Loki’s agony-drenched anger.

It warms Thor’s heart and yet, he is saddened that he has had to soak up the image so greedily. He knows not the last time he has been granted the privilege of passing over the threshold of these apartments. Certainly it was even before Loki’s fall.

It is a trial, Thor thinks, to be reminded at every corner just how far he and his brother have drifted from each other without him even knowing it. It is a trial, Thor thinks, to know how he has failed as a brother.

Thor’s ruminations are cut abruptly off when his knees hit the edge of Loki’s sunken bed, the polished onyx-stone platform digging demandingly into his flesh. He looks over into Loki’s eyes, still hard, jagged and black as the onyx chips hanging from the chandelier above the bed.

Thor turns, body lax and pliable, as he offers himself over to Loki’s control. Loki’s stern eyes do not change at Thor’s uncharacteristic biddableness, but the unforgiving claws that had attached themselves to Thor’s shoulders gentle, pry loose. They flitter about Thor’s chest indecisively for a moment before settling along Thor’s forearms, exhorting pressure that Thor allows to guide him to sit upon the lush silks and furs piled atop the feather mattress.

Confusion fills Thor’s mind, but he waits. Loki is commanding this encounter, as he will every other in the near future. Loki has said Thor never listened, never allowed Loki to lead; he will now. Loki will know Thor’s devotion to him through his docility.

Slowly, Loki falls to his knees before Thor. His hands grasp Thor’s ankles, cradling them, before he moves them up Thor’s calves, barely grazing them, the whisper of a touch eliciting thrills inside of Thor. He stills his reaction and commands his cock to sleep.

Loki has never indicated such an attraction to Thor and Thor will not force such knowledge upon Loki. Not now, when he is still so fragile. Perhaps, in the future, when they are both hale and hearty once more, emotionally as well as physically, he will let Loki know the dual nature of Thor’s love.

Loki’s hands stop atop Thor’s bent knees, picking idly at the scuffed leather patches of Thor’s riding breeches. The touch tickles through the rough fabric, but Thor refuses to make a noise. Loki is testing him, testing the strength of his vow, for Thor has ever had a weakness with feather-light touches on the crest of his knees.

Loki’s exploitation of them throughout their childhood has never failed to elicit loud, citadel-shaking booms of laughter. He bites the insides of his cheeks, blunt fingernails biting into the calloused palms of his hands.

The torture continues for a stretch into eternity, or so it seems for Thor and his thrice-damned delicate-skinned knees, before Loki lets up. The elegant instruments of Thor’s torture lift and smooth soothingly over their victims, atoning for their sensory crimes. Loki’s hooded eyes lift to Thor’s.The hardness still exists, but Thor sees the waver.

It is getting more difficult for Loki to maintain the façade. His eyes drop again as Loki sets to work loosening Thor’s boots, nimble fingers dancing from one lace to another until each boot is gaping. He pulls them off unceremoniously, tossing them behind him. They thud and scuff, but Thor does not mind. He has never cared for his clothes – even old riding boots – as Loki has.

Thor is shortly left bereft as Loki backs away, jerking the ties of his own boots open and, surprisingly, tossing them carelessly behind him as he had done Thor’s. Once their feet match in their nakedness, Loki closes the small gap to once again latch onto Thor’s shoulders. He pushes down on them, encouraging Thor to recline into the luxurious riot of bedclothes. Thor gets Loki’s idea and scoots backwards, until he is at the head of the bed, sinking into the overly lavish bedding and pillows.

Ensconced not entirely comfortably, as Loki has always tended toward treating his body like the thinnest of glass and Thor prefers harder surfaces for repose, he watches as Loki slithers onto the bed. He crawls his way up Thor’s body, eyes boring into Thor’s. This time, Thor cannot fathom if this is a challenge or merely residual anger, but he awaits the outcome serenely, mouth firmly closed.

Loki reaches the top of Thor’s body, stares for a moment longer, and then lowers himself, settling his body on Thor’s. He tucks his head against Thor’s broad chest, snugged beneath Thor’s chin, and clings tightly to Thor’s shirt. He is asleep within minutes.

Thor is relieved this first meeting since Loki’s sentencing has been violence free. He sighs deeply and wraps his arms around Loki’s body, mind recoiling from Loki’s obvious lack of any excess fat, or fat at all, upon his frame. He will not let anything spoil this moment of communion; it is to be peace, everything else can come after.             

||

Thor is awoken harshly by a sound slap to the face. He would like to admit surprise, but he knew this armistice could not last. He knows not how long they have slept, nor does he get any time to ponder it further, for he is punched heartily in the middle of his chest. It is not hard enough to damage, but Loki – as all Aesir – at least has enough strength to wind Thor.

Wheezing, disoriented from such an unforgiving awakening, Thor cannot defend himself. But even if he could, he would not. He has wounded his brother enough and perhaps Loki needs this. Or he is being a vindictive little prick, as Stark would say, but Thor understands that Loki may need to lash out. He must need to feel in control. It is all he had spouted about on Midgard.      

The abuse suddenly stops and Thor waits, eyes closed and body lax. There is rustling as Loki moves off the bed and Thor raises his head to follow Loki’s movements.

Loki stands at the edge of the sunlight that streams through many large, arched windows open to the balcony.

 _I hate you_ , his eyes scream.

 _I know,_ Thor’s say.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: http://norsekink.livejournal.com/11219.html?thread=24621523#t24621523  
> Written by cagedbirdsings (LJ nom de plume)  
> Title is a bastardized version of a quote by Henry David Thoreau  
> Any recognizable Marvel characters and Thor dialogue are not mine.


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